Posted on 04/03/2007 10:49:18 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
When two policemen turned up unannounced at Alan Rawlinson's home asking to speak to his young son, the company director feared something serious had happened.
So he was astounded when the officers detailed 11-year-old George's apparent crime - calling one of his schoolfriends 'gay'.
They said primary school pupil, George, was being investigated for a 'very serious' homophobic crime after using the comment in an e-mail to a 10-year-old classmate.
['Terrified': George Rawlinson with his mother Gaynor, who is a magistrate]
But now his parents have hit out at the police, who they accused of being heavy-handed and pandering to political correctness.
"It is completely ridiculous," Mr Rawlinson said.
"I thought the officers were joking at first, but they told me they considered it a very serious offence.
"The politically correct brigade are taking over. This seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial as a playground spat."
Cheshire police launched the investigation last month after a complaint from the parents of the 10-year-old younger boy who received George's e-mail.
They said their son had been called a 'gay boy' and were concerned that there was more to the comment than playground banter and that their child was being bullied.
As a consequence, two officers were sent to the boys' school, Farnworth Primary, in Widnes, Cheshire, to speak to the headteacher who directed them to the Rawlinsons' home in nearby St Helens, Merseyside.
George told his parents that the comment was in no way meant to be homophobic and that he had simply been using the word gay instead of 'stupid'.
Mr Rawlinson, 41, who runs his own business, and whose wife, Gaynor, also 41, is a magistrate, said his son was terrified when the police arrived at their home.
He feared he was going to be arrested and locked up in a cell because of it, he added. "I feel very aggrieved about this," Mr Rawlinson, who has lodged a formal complaint against the police, said.
"We are law-abiding citizens who have paid taxes all our lives.
"I've constantly contacted police about break-ins at my business and never get a suitable response.
"George was really upset, he thought he was going to be locked up. This just seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial."
Inspector Nick Bailey, of Cheshire police, said no further action would be taken against George. However, he said the force had been obliged to record the incident as a crime and that they had dealt with it in a 'proportionate' manner.
"The parents of the boy believed it was more sinister that just a schoolyard prank," Inspector Bailey said.
"We were obliged to record the matter as a crime and took a proportionate and maybe old fashioned view.
"Going to the boy's house was a reasonable course of action to take. This e-mail message was part of some behaviour which had been on going.
"The use of the word 'gay' would imply that it was homophobic, but we would be hard pushed to say it was a homophobic crime.
"This boy has not been treated as an offender."
This is a latest in a series of incidents where police have been accused of heavy handedness for interviewing or threatening children with prosecution for seemingly trivial crimes.
Last October the Daily Mail revealed how 14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class.
Teachers reported the youngster, from Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class 'discussion' because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English.
She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.
The incident followed that of a 15-year-old boy from Burnley, Lancashire, who was arrested, thrown in a police cell, hauled before the courts and landed with a criminal record simply for throwing a snowball at a car.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was prosecuted under a little used 160-year-old law last March, and fined £100 in a case which provoked a public outcry.
Hey take it easy with those shove it down our throats comments, it provides visuals I’d rather not think about.
Strict homosexual practice is a powerful weapon in the arsenal against overpopulation.
Meanwhile the Mad Mullahs in the mosques call for all Gays to be crucified.
Yes. This is how they avoid saying the word, "muslim" -- by lumping Indians, Chinese, Pakistanis, etal into the same overly broad category -- sort of like Clinton firing all US attorneys when all he really wanted to do was fire the ones investigating him in Arkansas. I'd bet the farm that the group the writer refers to are all muslim.
The English have gotten so silly that perhaps the muslims can straighten them out.
” I did learn something that day, though - calling the wrong person the wrong thing can have immediate consequences.”
None for me, I was big enough to be intimidating, I was 6’ tall when I was 11.
Whoa! Bad hair day.
But don't they usually know how to speak English?
Just like the Community of Christ no longer allowing itself to discriminate between saint, sinner or abomination.
HF
Could you elaborate on that please.
Funny, I was just going to say "Gutless Faggots" about Police who will not confront Muslims for publicaly advocating murder, but will film law abiding subjects, and send four cops to bully a little kid.
The 4 officer arrest is clearly over the top, but I find it a bit suspicious that we’re not being treated to the full text of the e-mail, or at least relevant excerpts beyond a single 3 letter word. If there were also threats of physical violence, then it’s a serious matter, regardless of what names the sender did or didn’t call the recipient. I’d also like to know a bit more about this kid’s disciplinary history at school. If he’s an established playground bully who makes a habit of beating up the weak and unpopular kids, aggressive intervention is warranted, though not the way it was done here.
The arrest of the kid who didn’t want to sit next to Asian classmates was also over the top. But I fail to see what the arrest and fine for throwing a snowball at a (presumably moving) car, has to do with either of the other incidents. Throwing snowballs at passing cars is calculated to startle the driver, and can very easily cause an accident involving property damage, injuries, or worse — there’s nothing “politically correct” about dealing with this as criminal activity, when the perpetrator is certainly old enough to understand the potential for harm. An arrest, followed by an approximately $200 fine and apparently no prison or other detention sentence is quite appropriate — even a tiny fender bender with a car parked on the side of the road would incur much costlier damage than the amount of the fine. And most likely the kid had “priors”.
I remember that story. PC is in the process of killing Britain.
Hasn’t everyone been called one name or another. I know that I have been called names and have called others names too. I called this one girl when I was 11 “Lucewhale” because she was so big. She scratched underneath my eye with her fingernail and that was the end of that. I was 11!!! Why can’t kids be kids and learn from stupidity? I would never do such a thing now, but at 11? I guess I would be behind bars in today’s world.
see 55
Hopefully at age 10, he’s undecided on that point, and is concerning himself with more age-appropriate issues, like how to persuade his parents to buy him the new bike he wants.
As a matter of fact, Orwell had a lot of trouble finding a publisher for Animal Farm. Among others, he sent the MS to T. S. Eliot in 1944. Eliot is not exactly famed as a leftist, but he turned it down, I suppose because Uncle Joe Stalin was England’s beloved ally at that time.
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